User:Willibrord~enwiki/Teatown

Teatown Lake Reservation

Basic Data for Teatown Lake Reservation Date opened: June 20, 1969 (190 acres)

Size Today: 834 acres (338 hectares)

Location: 1600 Spring Valley Road, Ossining, NY 10562 USA

Executive Director: Fred Koontz, Ph.D.

Website: teatown.org

GPS coordinates (for Teatown Lake): N 41.21454 and W -73.83264

Memberships/Partnerships: New York New Jersey Trail Conference, Land Trust Alliance, Federated Conservationists of Westchester County, Association of Nature Center Administrators, and Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley Colleges and Universities. Trail Map Interactive Habitat Map Teatown Fact Sheet

Overview and Mission
Located in the heart of the Lower Hudson Valley’s Hudson Highlands bioregion, Teatown Lake Reservation is the largest nonprofit nature preserve in Westchester County, New York. Teatown Lake Reservation is a nonprofit, environmental organization with an 834-acre nature preserve and very active education center located in Westchester County in the Towns of Yorktown, Cortlandt, and New Castle, while Teatown's postal address is in nearby Ossining. About 25,000 people come each year to hike the preserve’s 15 miles of trails, attend an education program, visit the Nature Center, or tour Wildflower Island. Teatown’s educators offer adult, family and children’s programs to 10,000 participants annually, including nearly 6,000 schoolchildren and 700 summer camp students.

Locally known as “Teatown,” the organization works to conserve biodiversity, teach ecology and promote nature-friendly living. Teatown Lake Reservation’s mission is to conserve open space and to educate citizens about the environment and involve the public in order to sustain the diversity of wildlife, plants and habitats for future generations. Visitors familiar with the nearby Greenburgh Nature Center and Rye Nature Center will also enjoy Teatown.

Annual Festivals
Teatown conducts three annual celebrations that are open to all: the Hudson River EagleFest, Plant Sale, and Fall Festival. The Hudson River Eagle Fest takes place in February each year, when winter conditions make eagles easier to spot as they search for prey on the Hudson River. The EagleFest is centered around live raptor demonstrations in tents at Croton Point Park. The bus tours from Croton Point to local eagle spotting sights up and down the lower Hudson Valley are so popular that reservations are needed. Guides with scopes are located at the bus stops along the tour. About 2,500 visitors took part in EagleFest 2008. Fourteen other non-profit organizations and five governmental agencies or municipalities participated. Beczak Environmental Education Center, Croton Point Nature Center, Van Cortlandt Manor and Constitution Marsh Audubon Center all held eagle programs in 2008. Before and during the 2008 event, 5,000 free eagle spotting maps were distributed. In 2009, EagleFest will take place on Saturday, February 7, 2009, regardless of weather conditions.

The annual Nature Friendly Plant Sale celebrates the Cliffdale Farm legacy of Teatown and is a well-known source for locally hardy and diverse garden plants. The Annual Plant Sale takes place each Spring as the gardening season gets underway. The annual Fall Festival takes place at the Nature Center grounds each autumn around harvest themes from the cider mill to pumpkin carving.

Conservation Outreach: Saving the Nature that lies between the Parks
Teatown is rapidly developing a reputation as the foremost environmental organization in the Hudson Hills and Highlands, providing conservation leadership to this bioregion, which encompasses most of Westchester and Putnam Counties, and parts of Dutchess, Orange and Rockland Counties. Teatown takes an active role in state, county and community efforts to protect open space and natural areas. Through Teatown’s Environmental Leaders Learning Alliance (ELLA), the organization provides assistance to civic leaders in crafting practical solutions to environmental issues and help land owners and residents become more “nature friendly between the parks.” Launched in 2008, the Alliance has good representation from the several dozens towns and villages whose conservation advisory council members are the principal beneficiaries. At each ELLA workshop, citizens who serve on their town or village’s environmental review committees receive training and insight into specific local challenges such groups face each month. For example, ELLA workshop topics have included background of locally invasive species, and detecting and protecting vernal pools.

In 2007, Teatown and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference established a partnership on a new effort to provide assistance to local trail programs in Putnam and Westchester Counties. Launched in July 2007, the “Hudson Hills and Highlands Community Trail Program” is one part of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference’s larger effort to expand its reach east of the Hudson River from New York City to Columbia County. The Hudson Hills and Highlands Community Trail Program reflects Teatown’s commitment to expand its work throughout the Hudson Hills and Highlands, and its belief in the value of partnering with other like-minded environmental organizations. For nearly 100 years, New York-New Jersey Trail Conference volunteers have helped public agencies provide safe and responsible access to open space from New York City west to the Delaware Water Gap and north to the Catskills.

Environmental Education
An important part of Teatown’s mission is to teach ecology and encourage responsible interaction with nature. About 25,000 people come each year to attend an education program, visit the Nature Center, hike its trails, or tour Wildflower Island, a two-acre island sanctuary located within Teatown Lake that is home to over 230 native and endangered species of wildflowers.

Teatown’s educators offer a variety of environmental education programs including weekend family and adults only programs, multi-week children’s series, school programs, school vacation camps, a summer camp, and special programs for Scouts and others organizations.

Over 10,000 participants annually attend one or more such educational programs, including nearly 6,000 school children and 700 summer campers. Annually, over 15,000 hikers traverse Teatown's 15 miles of scenic trails that span abundant fields, mixed forests, lakes, streams, swamps and farm land. Teatown volunteers also participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count sponsored by Audubon each winter.

Teatown’s Nature Center is a source of wildlife knowledge and home to a variety of amphibians, birds of prey, mammals and reptiles. The Nature Center also houses a Nature Store with good books and small gifts. And the Center often hosts gallery shows of art by area painters and photographers related to environmental themes.

Land Stewardship
Teatown Lake Reservation serves as an 834-acre oasis for many of the plants and animals that inhabit the Hudson Hills and Highlands. Teatown’s recently expanded its “Environmental Stewardship Program” to manage the flora and fauna living in our preserve for the benefit of nature conservation and regional ecological health. What began as a gift of 190 acres in 1963 has quadrupled in size including many different habitat from aquatic and wetland location to upland woods and meadows.

The foundation of Teatown's Stewardship Program is built on science and environmental management. Staff, collaborating scientists, students, and volunteers work together to document, monitor, and study the Reservation’s habitats, plants, and animals (its biodiversity) -- and to assess their ecological health and conservation status.

Based on these data, Teatown staff is developing new management activities to better protect our ecological communities and enhance Teatown’s contribution to local nature conservation. Long-term ecological monitoring using scientific methodologies will track the impact of the conservation efforts and allow for on-going adjustments and improvements. This environmental stewardship process called adaptive management.

Strengthening nature-friendly living through improved stewardship of private lands will be a key to ensuring regional sustainability. Hence, Teatown hopes to develop models that other land holders in the Hudson Hills and Highland can learn from and follow. The quarterly Newsletters cover all aspects of Teatown and offer short interesting articles on local nature.

Science in a Living Laboratory
The Stewardship Program requires Teatown to conduct its own scientific studies of the Reservation’s habitats, plants, and animals. Teatown’s Stewardship Program depends on the work of many scientists for its general understanding of the physical world (e.g. geologists and hydrologists) and the biological world (e.g. biologists and ecologists). This Program is an example of interdisciplinary work of modern conservation ecology.

In recent years, sprawling development, climate change, invasive species, and other environmental threats in the Hudson Hills and Highlands region call for more proactive in land management efforts. These efforts include setting management priorities and deciding on specific responses to environmental challenges. Teatown’s science-based conservation efforts involve staff as well as students, collaborating scientists, partnering organizations, and volunteers.

One current scientific focus of Teatown’s Stewardship Program is to document, assess, and begin formal monitoring of the Reservation’s biodiversity and natural resources. The monitoring portion of these studies will be on-going, so that population trends of flora and fauna can be detected over time. For example, the Stewardship Program team will be focusing its long-term monitoring efforts on habitats and organisms shown to be particularly sensitive to environmental change. These include the lakes, vernal pools and fens, lakeside dragonflies and damselflies, forest-interior birds, stream salamanders, turtles, and rare wildflowers. A full range to Teatown activities may be examined in the reports.

Trail links that mention Teatown
Teatown Hill Teatown Lake Loop Hiking Meetup Are we there yet? Maps at Topozone Fishing (Please note that fishing at Teatown Lake is prohibited, except for the once annual Fishing Day!).

Sites with images taken at Teatown
Marc Baumser Lenny56759

Books and Reports
Teatown Lake Reservation: Images of America, Lincoln Diamant, 978-0-7385-1068-8, 2002, Arcadia Publishing.

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: New York City, 2ed, Christopher and Catherine Brooks, 978-0-89732-982-8, 2008, Menasha Ridge Press

50 Hikes in the Lower Hudson Valley, Sheila Greenland and H. Neil Zimmerman, 978-0-88150-557-9, 2002, County Guides (pages 40-44)

New York State Handbook, Second Edition, Christiane Bird, 978-1-56691-201-6, 2000, Moon Travel Handbooks, (page 328)

The Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains: An Explorer’s Guide, Fifth Edition, Joanne Michaels, 0-978-0-88150-595-1, 2004, The Countryman Press, (pages 381-2, 400)

The Best of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains: An Explorer’s Guide, Fifth Edition, Joanne Michaels and Mary-Margaret Barile, 0-978-0-88150-490-4, 2001, Countryman Press, (page 269)

Other External links
USGS on Hudson Highlands New York State Parks

Wikipedia links that include Teatown
Croton-on-Hudson%2C_New_York Hudson_Highlands List_of_nature_centers_in_the_United_States New_Croton_Dam